New Ulm weekly review., 1887-10-19
Say do you Smoke !?

Say do you Smoke?
You Wizz Enjoy this Little Story Verys
Much If You Snaoke Cheap Cigars.
Have you ever when gazing into the
show window of a tobacconist and won
dering how manufacturer could pro-
ftably sell cigars at $1.25, $3.50 and
So a box asked yourself who made
them Did the ridiculous figure and
the more ridiculous weed ever seem to
your fancy to cover some strange or
morbid chapter Of industrial life
In that swarming district of New
York city known as the east side are
long rows Of high and narrow tenement
houses. -Four, five and six stories of
cheap edifice are bisected by narrow
hall and stairway from front to rear,
and each half is in turn bisected by a
filthy cross hall in the middle of the
building. Each of these four quarters
is an apartment. In the smaller tene-
ments these apartments contain two, in
the larger four, but in the great major
ity of cases three small, illlighted, poor
ly ventilated, low ceiled and foul smell
ing rooms. The tenants are seldom
Americans, seldom members of our
cousin races, the Germans, Irish and
English. Nearly all come from the
prolific southeast of Europe, and are of
more or less Slavonic origin. In this
mixture of races are Polaks, Slovaks,
Bohenians, Hungarians, Czechs, Rou-
manians, black and white Russians,
Wallachs, Bulgarians and Croats. In
fact, the whole ethnography of that
part of Europe is condensed into few
thickly populated New. York blocks.
They crowd the apartments more like
bees in a hive than humble beings in a
home. Not one set of two rooms con-
tains less than five souls; many contain
eight or ten. The average number of
tenants to an apartment is seven; to
floor, 80, and to '.dumb bell,'' as
these ant heaps are termed, 40.
And these apartments are more than
dwelling places. They are the work
shops where the cheap cigar is manu-
factured and these foreigners are its
makers. The buildings are owned by
the manufacturers. The rent ($1O to
$l6 per month) is payable in advance,
and is deducted by the landlord from
the amount due the tenant for his work.
It is almost needless to remark that
dispossess proceedings are rare in the
trade, though not quite unknown, as
the columns Of the daily papers have
sometimes shown. The mode of work
is simple. The tenant presents himself
at the warerooms Of his employers, re-
ceives say 50 pounds of tobacco and
goes back with his load to his apart
ment. For this he must return 81
pounds of cigars, the additional pound
representing the increase in the weight
of the tobacco from the absorption of
the water used in moistening it during
the making. AS matter Of fact, the
increase is really third of pound.
TO make up the difference, the work
man utilizes every particle of dust and
waste. He soaks the stems in hot water
till they are soft, and then pounds them
out into fiat shreds. Taug ht dishonesty
by his superiors, he applies it for his
own benefit, and sends out his children
to gather cigar stumps and clippings,
spent tea leaves and even dead leaves
from the trees in the street. Hereturns
81 pounds of cigars with perfect regu-
larity, but is always provided with ci-
gars and smoking tobacco which cost
him nothing.
The tobacco is stored in his rooms in
broken boxes and dillapidated milk
cans. It is everywhere else in his apart
| ment, on the floor, walls and ceiling,
in the furniture, wearing apparel, and
even in the food. An outsider who
enters for the first time sneezes just as
| if he had taken snuff And those who
live and work in the atmosphere? They
all show the symptoms of of gradual
| nicotine poisoning, hollow eyes set in
| dark circles, a sallow brown skin, irri-
tated and irritable nerves, heart dis
ease, dyspepsia and consumption.
The man, his wife and children,
working IA hours day, earn from 81
| to $l5 a week. Out of this is deducted
the rent and the fines for poor work
manship. The pittance that remains
must clothe, feed and pay the other ex-
penses of life. It seldom does, and
crime, beggary and vice are called upon
to aid in filling the family exchequer.
| The children are sent out to beg and
many of them pilfer. At all hours of
the day and evening they can be seen
carrying the boards and boxes and rel
les they have picked up on the streets,
vegetables they have purloined from
grocers and meats they have begged
in the markets. As they grow older
their degradation becomes darker and
deeper. The girls, knowing no better,
enter lives of shame. In many instanc-
es they are sold outright by their par
ents to men who enjoy the possession
of a cook, housekeeper and wife with
out any ceremony Of marriage.
It's hardly necessary to state that
morality, education, decency and re-
ligion are at low ebb in this terrible
district. In some of the .'dumb bells'
they scarcely seem to exist. And yet
in the very heart of the population is an
ever increasing agitation Blind, ig-
norant, fanatical and half hopless, it
takes refuge in schemes of anarchism,